Russia has been accused of war crimes in Ukraine, claims growing louder after dozens of bodies were recently discovered in areas evacuated from Russian forces near the capital Kyiv.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Moscow of attempting a “genocide” over the findings and termed the bloody siege of the southern port of Mariupol a “crime against humanity”.
We take a look at the different categories of the most serious crimes known to man, for which the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established in The Hague to try.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine are parties to the ICC, but Ukraine has accepted court jurisdiction for alleged crimes committed on its soil since Russia’s invasion of Crimea.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor launched an investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine on 3 March.
What is war crime?
War crimes are serious violations of international law against civilians and combatants during an armed conflict.
The parameters that constitute such an offense are set forth in Article 8 of the Rome Statute of 1998 which established the ICC.
It defines them as “serious violations” of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, covering more than 50 scenarios, including murder, torture, rape and the taking of hostages, as well as attacks on humanitarian missions.
It includes intentional attacks on civilians or “towns, villages, dwellings or buildings that are unsafe and which are not military purposes” as well as “the deportation or relocation of all or part of the population” of an occupied territory. .
What is a crime against humanity?
The presumption of such an offense was first laid down on August 8, 1945, and codified in Article 7 of the Rome Statute. It includes “a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population” including “murder” and “destruction”, as well as “servitude” and “deportation or forced relocation”.
Crimes against humanity can occur in peacetime and include torture and rape and discrimination, whether based on racial, ethnic, cultural, religious or gender.
What is massacre?
As a legal concept genocide dates back to the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, Polish-Jewish lawyer Rafael Lemkin coined the term to describe the Nazi extermination of six million Jews.
The crime of genocide was formally created in the 1948 Genocide Convention to describe “acts committed with the intent to destroy wholly or partially a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.
Genocide is a “very specific international crime” that is difficult to prove, says Cecily Rose, professor of international law at Leiden University in the Netherlands, noting that it calls for evidence of the “mental motivation” behind it.
Newcomer: Crime of Aggression
The ICC in 2017 added the offense of aggression to its remit to include attacks on the “sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence” of another country.
The offense is intended to ensure that political and military leaders are held accountable for attacks and other major attacks, but cannot be used against dozens of ICC members who have not recognized the court’s jurisdiction for the offense .
The ICC cannot even convict the leader of a country that is not a member of the ICC, for the offense of aggression.
Legal experts say a special tribunal may be needed to bring such a case against Russia.
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